The Garter
1724
Object Details
Artist: Jean François de Troy (French, Paris 1679–1752 Rome)
Date: 1724
Medium: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: 25 1/2 × 21 1/8 in. (64.8 × 53.7 cm)
Classification: Paintings
Credit Line: Bequest of Mrs. Charles Wrightsman, 2019
Accession Number: 2019.141.22
A man offers to help a woman reattach her garter, a common conceit in erotic painting and literature in eighteenth-century France. Her hand firmly rejects his advance, but the indecorous decision to reveal her leg in his presence suggests a ruse—perhaps inspired by the contents of the book she has discarded next to an already disrobed bronze statuette. The clock resembles the latest models by the famed furniture maker André Charles Boulle and includes a figure of Saturn, or Father Time, whose scythe has been stolen by Cupid.
Text from:
www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/438126
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